


Tilting

by abby_sass_ettura



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fake Dating, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 05:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13675029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abby_sass_ettura/pseuds/abby_sass_ettura
Summary: "I'm calling in a favor."





	Tilting

“I’m calling in a favor.” 

Derek feels the sigh start in the pit of his stomach, long before it reaches the cresting waves of his shoulders. He knows that tone of voice. That cheeky, commanding, I’m-calling-the-shots-here swagger layered over the wobbly insecurity of knowing you’re asking for too much. When Derek dies and stands at the edge of the river Styx, waiting to be ferried across to the underworld, Chiron’s voice will sound exactly like Dex’s voice does right now. 

Derek lets the sigh heave out of his chest with the fatalistic drama of someone who already knows they’re about to get fucked.

“A favor.”

“Yes.”

Derek leans backwards in his chair, tipping his head until it hangs upside-down between his shoulders. Dex’s freckled, anxious face appears above his. 

“And what favor would that be, on this, the day we agreed would be spent in silence and solitude as per Article C of our cohabitation treaty?”

Dex’s nose wrinkles in annoyance, scrunching up like bunny. 

“Well, nothing, if you’re going to be a dick about it.”

Derek swings around in his chair until he’s nose-to-looming-chest with Dex. All he wanted this Valentine’s day was to be left alone.

You know. To mourn for his hopelessly unrequited crush on his roommate in peace.

But here he is, in all his ginger headed gangly glory, asking Derek for a favor on Valentines Day in direct violation of Article C, and really, Derek can only be expected to withstand so much.

“Sorry. Dick mode deactivated. What do you need, bro?”

Dex blinks, obviously surprised by the change of tack. 

“Um. Well.”

The blustering pause that follows is unfortunately charming.

“It’s. Well. There’s no good way to say this. I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.”

Derek…thinks he might have blacked out there, for a minute, actually.

“What?”

Dex’s blush is a sweet sweep of pink under his freckles. _I’m dying,_ Derek thinks. _This is my brain’s final attempt at simulating euphoria at the time of death._

“I need you to pretend to date me. Tonight.”

“I’m… I think I missed a step, there. Maybe.”

Dex huffs in frustration. He scrunches one hand up in his hair, tugging at the roots. He looks anxious and jittery, and more than a little irritated, and frankly this is not at all how Derek imagined being asked out by William Poindexter would go. 

“It’s a long story.”

“Sounds like it’s worth the wait, there, bud.”

“Look—“

“No, seriously, I’ll make time.“

“Nursey—“

“I mean if I’m going to be taking you on a Valentine’s Day date I’d expect there to be a little backstory—“

“Would you just let me talk?”

Derek relents a little, easing back in his chair. He stretches his long legs out in front of him, forcing Dex to take a step back. Dex narrows his eyes at him, and then sighs again.

“It’s… do you know that girl Lisa? In Ancient Civ?”

“The one with the curly hair?”

“Yes.”

Derek nods. He does know Lisa from Ancient Civ. She’s pretty, in a comfortable kind of way, with her big dark eyes and her big curly hair. She’s a hugger. 

“She asked me out.”

Derek blinks.

“Lisa from Ancient Civ asked you out?”

“Right.”

There’s another pause, as though somehow Dex believes this serves as explanation enough. Derek raises an eyebrow.

“…..And?”

“And I told her I was gay.”

Derek can’t help the laugh that comes ugly-snorting out his nose. He really can’t. One minute he’s facing down almost certain heartbreak— or at the very least humiliation— at the hands of his roommate who also happens to be the love of his life, and the next minute he’s picturing William deer-in-the-headlights Poindexter outing himself to Lisa from Ancient Civ because she dared to ask him out.

It’s not Derek’s proudest moment, he’ll admit it. But karma so rarely throws him these kinds of bones.

Dex’s face manages to be both unimpressed and unsurprised at the same time.

“Lisa asked you out on _Valentines Day._ And you just… told her you were gay?” 

It’s possible he’ll break a rib from laughing. Isn’t that something that happens to people?

“I panicked.”

“Clearly.”

Dex scowls. It makes the lines on either side of his nose get deeper. Derek loves him so damn much.

“I’m still not clear on how we get from your impromptu coming-out to me pretending to date you on what is possibly the most cliché and dramatic day of the year.” 

Dex sighs again. Derek starts to worry if he keeps it up, he’ll hyperventilate. 

“She asked me to the girls’ soccer party tonight. When I told her I was gay, she said I should bring my boyfriend. I didn’t… it happened really fast, okay?”

Derek has to actively clench the plane of his abdomen tight to keep the hysterical giggle from bursting out of him. 

“Can’t you just not go?”

“Don’t you think that’d be adding insult to injury? She asked me out on Valentine’s Day.”

There are moments, Derek thinks. Every once in a while, there are moments when the entire world tilts on its axis. Like when he was five, and he saw his kindergarten teacher at the Olive Garden. Or like when he learned that the seasons go backwards in Australia. 

Falling in love with William Poindexter has been a constant flow of those moments. Every minute shifts the paradigm, every interaction changes the shape of the solar system. Every new thing Derek learns about Dex, it moves the foundations of the Earth a little more— a couple degrees here, a couple inches there, until all of a sudden Derek’s on a path he didn’t even see. 

Like now, with the discovery that even an anxious, embarassed William Poindexter would bend himself into a pretzel before he intentionally caused another person pain.

_You may as well,_ says the voice of Chiron, paddling Derek’s canoe down the river. _You’re already doomed._

Derek sighs. He tilts his head up at Dex, sees the lamplight in his hair, sees the freckles on his long nose. 

“Alright,” Derek says. “Lead the way, Princess.”

~

The party is about what you’d expect for a college soccer team’s Valentine’s Day soiree.  Red streamers, glittery heart-shaped cutouts suspended from the ceiling, a punch in a truly violent shade of pink that Derek refuses to touch on principle. All in all, it’s nothing too outrageous.

Or at least, it wouldn’t be, if he wasn’t also holding William Poindexter’s hand.

The music thumps low in another room when he and Dex walk in. Almost immediately Lisa is on them, pushing beers into their hands and beaming.

“I’m so glad you came! One of us should get to dance with our Valentine tonight at least, right, Will?”

Derek sympathizes with her in the worst way.

“I guess, yeah. I’m sorry, again, about—“

“Oh no, stop! I’m just teasing you. I had no idea you two were together!”

_Neither did I,_ Derek thinks. He takes a long pull on his beer to avoid answering. Next to him, Dex gives a kind of nervous half-chuckle, flexing his fingers convulsively around Derek’s hand.

“Yeah, it’s, um. Recent.”

The giggle is back in Derek’s throat. He coughs it out as best he can, trying to stay cool.

“Thanks for having us, Lisa,” he says, as if forcing the hysteria in his chest into word-shapes will make it less unbearable. 

“Any time!” Lisa says. She cranes her head around Dex’s shoulder then, someone in the room beyond catching her eye. “Sorry, excuse me, you guys. I’ve gotta go make the rounds. Go on, enjoy the party!”

She’s gone in a bounce of brown curls, and Derek is left with the acute sensation of Dex’s fingers in-between his and the growing sense that this might really be his last night on the Earth.

Next to him, Dex sags minutely in relief, exhaling in a whoosh.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. It’s not quite too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Derek’s sure no one else is listening to them. It feels private, secure. 

“No problem, bro,” Derek answers. Even though it’s rapidly becoming the biggest problem of Derek’s entire life.

“She doesn’t seem too put out, does she?’

“Nah, she seemed okay. Plus, look at her. She won’t have any trouble finding someone else.”

Dex goes strangely tense next to him, and all of a sudden Derek’s hand is empty. He blinks at the loss. When he finally shakes himself back to reality, Dex is stiff and somehow distant.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “If I’d known you were interested, I wouldn’t have—“

The giggle comes back too quickly for Derek to stop it, this time. It comes out though his nose almost like a sneeze, a wild puff of disbelief in a higher register than Derek’s hairline. Dex is blushing, scuffing his shoe on the ground, that irritated hunch already curling around his shoulders. 

_May as well,_ Derek thinks. He stuffs the giggle back down. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all.

“Dex,” he says. Derek reaches out and laces his fingers back firmly into Dex’s, squeezing them tightly under the Cupid cut-outs and the lace doily hearts in the windows.

“I’m not interested in her.”

When Dex squeezes back, Derek feels the world tilt on its axis, a few more degrees towards the sun.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day to Tumblr user dievampiredie, and to all the lovely people who made the Valentine's exchange happen!


End file.
